Homotherium
Name:
Homotherium
(Same beast)
Phonetic: Hoe-moe-fee-ree-um.
Named By: Fabrini - 1890.
Synonyms: Dinobastis, Ischyrosmilus.
Classification: Chordata, Mammalia, Felidae,
Machairodontinae, Machairodontini.
Species: H aethiopicum, H crenatidens,
H crusafonti, H hadarensis, H idahoensis, H ischyrus, H
johnstoni, H latidens, H nestianus, H nihowanensis, H
sainzelli, H serum, H ultimum, H venezuelensis.
Diet: Carnivore.
Size: 1.1 meters high at the shoulder.
Known locations: Across Eurasia, Africa, North
America, also present in South America (specifically Venezuela).
Time period: Throughout the Pliocene and Pleistocene
periods.
Fossil representation: Multiple specimens.
The
Pliocene and Pleistocene periods are well documented as having a large
number of big cats roaming all over the world as apex predators of the
landscape, however Homotherium is actually quite
different to many of
the other genera. To begin with, Homotherium is
what is termed a
scimitar-toothed cat (after the sword), which means that while it
had enlarged upper canine teeth they were not so long that they
extended past the lower jaw like they do in sabre-toothed cats like
Smilodon.
These enlarged canines also had a serrated edge which
indicates that they were used for cutting through flesh, although
this might be to facilitate killing bites that opened up a wide open
wound in prey rather than being feeding tools. Because the teeth were
also laterally compressed (as in they were flattened and would look
thin when viewed from the front) they were quite weak, and
Homotherium would not have taken unnecessary chances
with them for fear
of breakage.
Homotherium
is usually associated with higher latitudes like cold steppes which
were predominantly colder with large prey animals. One thing that
quite literally makes Homotherium stand out as
different from other big
cats is the shape and proportions of its legs. Homotherium
stands
tall with especially long fore legs and shoulders that result in its
back sloping downwards towards is hindquarters, giving Homotherium
a
side wards profile similar to that of a hyena (all though it’s fair
to bear in mind that hyenas are considered to be closely related to
the cats of the Felidae). This means that Homotherium
were built
for energy efficient travel, and may even have used this advantage to
wear prey down in a manner similar to how wolves will constantly harass
a prey animal until it collapses with exhaustion. Evidence to support
this comes from the enlarged nasal opening that would have allowed for
a greater rate of respiration, something that would be necessary for
active and energetic hunting.
A
further locomotory adaptation seems to be the partially plantigrade
feet, which means that Homotherium would have
walked with more of
the flat of its foot rather than balancing upon its toes. This could
be an adaptation to the snowy conditions of the North where Homotherium
seems to have been most common, as this would reduce ground pressure
from the weight of the body which means that the paws would not have
sunk down so much into soft snow, much in the way that snow shoes
allow people to walk on snow. This would allow Homotherium
extra
traction on snowy ground, as well as extra support for dealing with
struggling prey.
Homotherium
is found in areas that had large amounts of big herbivores like
mammoths and rhinos that were suited to open steppe environments.
Additionally remains of these herbvivores have been found in
association with Homotherium remains, including
some deposits that
hint towards a specialisation in juvenile mammoths. Large prey like
these would be difficult for one individual Homotherium
to bring down
which supports the theory that Homotherium formed
prides similar to
modern lions in Africa. This also mirrors behaviour seen in modern
lions that will sometimes kill juvenile elephants no more than two to
four years old, predatory behaviour that has been both witnessed and
documented on film.
Homotherium
had both the body and tools to deal with large prey, since the long
legs would have also helped it to reach up onto its victim to better
use its teeth. The serrations on these teeth could have also allowed
them to slice through the preys tough and thick hide to create wounds
that bled profusely, weakening the prey until it died from blood
loss, perhaps expedited by a bite to neck.
There
are collections of juvenile mammoth bones that seem to have been
collected by carnivores and hoarded for future consumption, one of
the best examples being Friesenhahn cave in Texas, USA where several
hundred individual mammoths are associated with the remains of over
thirty individual Homotherium. While Homotherium
is thought to
possibly be one of the predators involved, it is still not known for
certain if it was the one doing the hoarding. But if Homotherium
was
taking body parts from the kill site for later consumption it would
infer behaviour that is sometimes seen in modern cats, as well as
behaviour of the other key Pleistocene predators such as the cave
hyena that was wide spread across Eurasia.
Cave
hyenas were very similar in body layout to Homotherium,
and they seem
to have had a preference for killing large prey like woolly rhinos and
horses. However cave hyenas were also scavengers, and while most of
the remains in their dens were of the aforementioned animals, there
are remains for animals that they scavenged. By contrast Homotherium
is usually found with mammoths, strongly suggesting that Homotherium
was not scavenging them, but hunting them.
It
might seem an unnecessary expense of energy for a predator to kill an
animal and then carry off large portions of the body away from the kill
site, but it actually makes good sense as it helps ensure that the
predator that killed the prey gets at least an equal return of energy
from feeding from the carcass. Today in Africa leopards are very
capable predators, but are small compared to lions, and easily
overwhelmed by packs of hyena. To this end they drag their kills up
into trees where these other predators cannot follow them, so that
they can eat their fill without having it stolen away, or even
getting injured in the process. Back in the Pleistocene the rules
were no different, Homotherium would have had to
hold its own against
other big cats like the Eurasian
cave lion, cave hyena, wolves,
and perhaps most dangerous of all giant bears like Arctodus
(better
known as the short faced bear) that seem to be best adapted for
stealing the kills of other predators. Homotherium,
even if hunting
in small groups could not fend off these other carnivores
indefinitely, and would only be able to eat so much at the first
sitting. So by carrying off parts like legs and even heads,
Homotherium could have had a chance of a second
later feed while
abandoning the rest of the carcass to other meat eaters that may have
been willing to use force to claim dominance over the carcass.
Like
with so many of the Pleistocene predators, Homotherium
disappeared
completely at a time when much of the other mammalian megafauna that it
preyed upon also largely disappeared from the face of the planet. The
reasons for this disappearance are still debated, but theories
include climate change, human hunting to even diseases spread by new
animals migrating into the lands, and of course any combination of
the above. The first populations of Homotherium
to disappear were in
Africa during the early Calabrian stage of the Pleistocene
approximately one and a half million years ago. Most of the Eurasian
populations however survived to as recently as thirty thousand years
ago (late Tarantian) when the landscape was shifting towards a
greater coverage of forests that favoured herbivores that Homotherium
was not as well suited to hunting.
The
very last Homotherium are known from North America
and are dated to
around ten thousand years ago. Again this coincides with the
disappearance of the native megafauna, but also the appearance of the
first human settlers that are called Clovis people who are known to
have hunted mammoths. There is not sufficient enough evidence to say
that human hunting was the sole cause of the disappearance of the
megafauna here, but it may well have been a contributing factor in a
land that like the rest of the world was experiencing a shift towards a
different climate that proved too much for the megafauna to adapt to.
Further reading
- The saber-toothed cat Dinobastis serus. -
Bulletin of the Texas
Memorial Museum 2(II), 23–60. - G. E. Meade - 1961.
- The scimitar cat Homotherium serum (Cope). -
Report of Investigations
(Illinois State Museum) (47): pp. 1–80. - V. Rawn-Schatzinger - 1992.
- Late Pleistocene survival of the saber-toothed cat Homotherium
in
northwestern Europe. - Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 23: 260 -
J.W.F. Reumer, L. Rook, K. Van Der Borg, K. Post, D. Mol & J.
De Vos - 2003.
- Co-existence of scimitar-toothed cats, lions and hominins in the
European Pleistocene. Implications of the post-cranial anatomy of
Homotherium latidens (Owen) for comparative
palaeoecology. - Quaternary
Science Reviews 24. -Mauricio Ant�na, Angel Galobart & Alan
Turner - 2004.
- New saber-toothed cat records (Felidae: Machairodontinae) for the
Pleistocene of Venezuela, and the Great American Biotic Interchange -
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 31 (2), 468-478 - A. Rinc�n, F.
Prevosti & G. Parra - 2011.
- New saber-toothed cat records (Felidae: Machairodontinae) for the
Pleistocene of Venezuela, and the Great American Biotic Interchange. -
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 31 (2), 468-478. - Johanna L.A.
Paijmans, Ross Barnett, M. Thomas, P. Gilbert, Michael V. Westbury,
Axel Barlow & Michael Hofreiter - 2017.
- Distinct Predatory Behaviors in Scimitar- and Dirk-Toothed Sabertooth
Cats. - Current Biology. 28 (20): 3260–3266.e3. - Borja Figueirido,
Stephan Lautenschlager, Alejandro Perez-Ramos & Blaire Van
Valkenburgh - 2018.
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